PacketCable 1.5, CMS to CMS Signaling (PKT-SP-CMSS1.5-I06-100120) and PacketCable 2.0, Electronic Surveillance Intra-Network Specification (PKT-SP-ES-INF-001-140314), disclosed in the above-referenced provisional application, the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entireties, relate to environments where Lawfully Authorized Electronic Surveillance (LAES) headers are used to facilitate surveilling Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) sessions. PacketCable 1.5 specification describes the PacketCable Call Management Server (CMS) to CMS Signaling protocol intended for use by a CMS to communicate with another CMS in order to support packet-based voice and other real-time multimedia applications. PacketCable 2.0 specifies the lawfully authorized electronic surveillance requirements for the components internal to the PacketCable architecture that support SIP based PacketCable clients. These specifications/protocols, as well as others aimed at supporting SMP sessions or other types of sessions between two or more entities, may be required to comply with law enforcement requirements to provide surveillance or other tracking and monitoring of messages, content, packets, data, etc. as exchange therein.
Individuals, computers or other entities may be able to ascertain whether surveillance is being performed on session-by-session basis simply from identifying the use of LAES headers within corresponding messages, e.g., sessions utilizing LAES headers may be assumed to be under surveillance while sessions not relying upon or otherwise utilizing LAES headers may be assumed to not be under surveillance. One non-limiting aspect of the present invention contemplates obfuscating the use of LAES headers so as to make it more difficult to determine or less likely to successfully infer surveillance based on the presence or absence of data, fields, etc. within LAES headers.